Runaways

by Carolyn McCrae

  “That sounds like you feel you have.”

  I wondered if I had gone too far. He stood up and lit the fire in the grate. He seemed to be settling in to talk for some time.

  “Perhaps I have nothing to lose by explaining…”

  “Justifying…”

  “That, perhaps.”

  “I was married to a woman I never slept with. I have made love to many women, your mother included, but I have only once been in love.”

  He went to a small table and poured two glasses of a brown liquid from a decanter. His voice steadier. “You see whoever stole everything from me didn’t know what he was looking for. This…” he held the decanter in the air “…is absolutely priceless. It was owned by the Princess Sophie, only daughter of Franz, Archduke of Austria, Prince Imperial of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia.”

  “The one who was assassinated in 1914?” I was stunned as Max nodded.

  “They took so much but they did not take everything.”

  As he sat down in the other armchair by the fire that was beginning to give off some heat he handed me a glass.

  “I was a young man. I was misguided, my priorities were wrong and I missed the opportunity of a lifetime. It has cost me, believe me, it has cost me very dear.”

  “Was she in Vienna? Your lady?”

  “She was.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Without the whole story, it makes no sense.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Max Fischer’s life was never going to be an easy one.

  He was born into a lower middle class family at the beginning of 1906, the second child of elderly parents. His father was a shop keeper. The family, a relatively prosperous one, was well respected in the small town a few miles from Vienna. His sister Ingrid was ten years older than Max and had left home when she married Johannes in 1915. They had been introduced by a mutual friend and although her parents were not satisfied with the marriage, they knew that with the war there would be fewer suitable men and Ingrid seemed happy enough with the prospect of life as a farmer’s wife. It wasn’t long before she had two young sons to keep her busy as the seasons and the years passed.

  Once a year after harvest Ingrid packed two bags and took the boys, Matthieu and August, to spend a week with her family in the city. In 1927 her visit was later than usual as there had been a general strike and violence in Vienna with many protesters and policemen killed. It was thought by many that there would be a revolution and Johannes forbade her to go until the city had quietened down. In previous years her visit had been in July or August but it was late September when she walked with her brother through the parks of the Prater towards the giant Ferris wheel while he told her excitedly of the change in his circumstances. No longer would he be a poverty stricken student living beyond his means, he had found a sponsor.

  “It was an accident. I was just walking along the street. Everyone knew there was going to be trouble but we thought it would be concentrated in a few streets, the usual places.”

  “This would be the ‘we’ that spends all your time drinking and womanising.” Ingrid said disapprovingly, but Max ignored her.

  “On that Friday it was dreadful. There had been a trial and the city was alive with rumours, apparently the perpetrators had not been found guilty though everyone who had thought about it knew them to be as guilty as…”

  “I don’t understand politics.”

  “There were people on street corners making speeches supporting a general strike, word got around quickly and there were groups of people demonstrating, some were more violent than others, one set fire to the Palace of Justice. It seemed like a revolution. The police came on the streets and started shooting, the demonstrators shot back, people were being killed all over the city. The bar filled with young men with wounds of varying degrees of seriousness but all bringing news, more or less accurate, of what was happening in the city. I left the bar to see what was happening.”

  “Were you drunk?”

  “Of course not. Well, maybe, but no more than was usual.”

  “You should have gone home. What would have happened to our parents if you had got yourself killed? You were very reckless.” Ingrid’s made her disapproval obvious.

  “People were saying history was being made and I wanted to see it.” Max knew he could justify his actions. “So I went out into the streets. I was stopped by a group of thugs who were going to hurt me but I talked my way out of danger, they heard my accent, they realised I wasn’t a toff and they let me go.”

  “But you always speak so well now, you have no accent at all.”

  “I can revert to the old ways of speaking, Ingrid, I have to be a chameleon, changing my voice for the different people I meet. I can be well-spoken when I have to be but equally, I can be as common as you like if it suits.”

  “That is dreadful Maxi, you will lose sight of who you really are if you do that.”

  “Of course I won’t. I will always be me.”

  “You still should have gone home.”

  “But I didn’t, I carried on through the streets towards the Rathaus, I saw more and more groups of thugs. As I passed some university buildings I saw a man in a dark blue coat. He was holding his hat in both hands in front of his chest, as if it would protect him against the screaming and swearing pack that seemed to be baiting him. I thought they were going to kill him, he thought they were going to kill him. I waded in, speaking in my working class accent, saying they were mistaken, this was a good man, a friend to my poor family, they should let him go. I grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him after me. I was perhaps too rough but we got away.”

  “You were very foolish Maxi, you could have been killed twice in a few minutes.” Ingrid was torn between horror at her brother’s actions and admiration of his bravery and quick thinking.

  “I’m sure there was no real threat. They seemed dangerous but most of the people that night were killed by the police.”

  “Oh no! That’s not true!”

  “It is. Still we must not discuss politics I know Johannes’ views and they are not my own. He will talk to August and Mattieu and fill their heads with that dangerous right wing nonsense.”

  “I’m sure I don’t understand. I am just pleased you weren’t harmed. What did you do with the man?”

  “I took him into a bar, it wasn’t a very clean bar but he bought us both several drinks to help us get over our shock. He said his name was Münz. I explained who I was and that I was studying at the university to be a lawyer but I was worried that I would never make a success of my career as it was always difficult for someone without the right connections, however clever, to get a position in the right kind of firm.”

  “You should not have been so forward, Max.”

  “I realised I had been very lucky with the man I had saved.”

  “Why was that?”

  “He asked me questions about myself and my family. ‘Did I have any dependents?’ ‘Did I support my parents?’ I said ‘No, of course I didn’t. I was a young man, my parents, though not rich were well enough off for their needs and wishes’.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He was very particular about that. ‘A young man setting himself up in life should be unencumbered of women, be they wives or mothers’, it seemed very important to him.”

  “So you told him you were young and free and what did he do?”

  “We had had three or four drinks when he delved into his pocket and drew out a card. We will meet at my offices at 11 on Monday morning. He said he thought I was an ambitious young man who will work hard and do well.”

  “So you went to his offices on the Monday at 11?”

  “Of course.”

  “And…”

  “There he agreed to support me at the university until I pass all my examinations, another three years. He has been very generous.”

  “And what must you do in return?”

  “I saved his life Ingri
d. What more can I do for him?”

  When Max saw Ingrid two years later he was less forthcoming about Mr Münz when she asked her brother how his career was progressing.

  “Do you see Mr Münz very often?”

  “I work in his offices once a month. It’s very interesting work.”

  “Does he ask you to do anything else?”

  “He has instructed me to learn English.”

  “English? What do you need to speak that language for? Is it political?” Even Ingrid in the rural west of the country knew of the changes that were happening in her country. She knew that no one had settled down after the Great War. Even her husband Johannes, who had not read a newspaper for years, now listened regularly to the wireless in the bar in the village. He said it would not be long before there was a war between the socialists and the industrialists. She didn’t see how the English would be involved.

  “It is a difficult language but interesting.”

  Max had become an invaluable part of the team that met every weekend at the Münz offices. They spent their time tracking down records, accumulating details of assets, searching for papers, birth, marriage and death certificates, drawing up family trees. Mr Münz wanted to know everything about everyone who was anyone in the city. And the team grew in experience and expertise.

  It had taken only a few weeks before Max realised his role on the team. Some of the areas that had to be explored were in the parts of the city where the accents he could adopt would allow him to obtain information that none of the others could hope to gather.

  It wasn’t that he had saved Mr Münz, it was how he had saved him that had given him his chance.

  It took him only a little longer to realise how this work could be turned to his own advantage. He had realised that many of the people they were documenting, indeed most of them, were Jewish. The accent he could so easily adopt was the one of a lower middle class Jewish shopkeeper, the precise accent of his grandfather.

  In July 1929 Max’s conversations with Ingrid were not of his English lessons or of his weekends working in the Münz offices, it was of his girlfriend.

  “But didn’t Mr Münz insist on no women, no girlfriends, no encumbrances?”

  “She’s beautiful but I’m not going to get tied down.”

  “Make sure you don’t. At your age you must simply stay with your friends, in a group.”

  “Safety in numbers?”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “She’s the daughter of one of the men who work at the weekends. She’s very respectable.”

  “I’ve no doubt she is.” Whenever the question of respectability or class came into the conversation between Ingrid and Max there was always awkwardness. They were both aware of the difference in status between a small-holder’s wife in the west of the country and a prosperous shopkeeper in a town not too far from the capital.

  “Her father speaks very good English and is helping me speak it well too.”

  “Well you are 23 years old now, you know what’s best for yourself.”

  “I think so.”

  “I hope so.”

  In 1930 Max needed to handle his sister Ingrid very carefully.

  “I can’t possibly take her.”

  “You have to Ingrid, I have no other choice.”

  “You don’t have a choice? It seems to me that it is I who have no choice.”

  “You’ve always wanted a daughter.”

  Ingrid’s two sons took after their father in too many ways. He had often spoken of her wish that one of her children had been a daughter, a daughter would help her around the house. Johannes had his two sons to help him with the animals and in the fields. She had no one.

  “If you don’t take her she’ll end up in an orphanage.”

  “So? She is an orphan. Her mother doesn’t want her and her father can’t look after her.”

  “Her parents have told me I must take responsibility next week. The baby will be a month old. Any longer with her mother and they say she won’t want to give her up. There’s no one else but you.”

  “What does Mr Münz say?”

  “Mr Münz has been very kind to me. He’s given me a second chance, as long as I get someone to look after the child and I continue to have no responsibilities. He says soon it will be too dangerous to have responsibilities. There will be a war and young men must be free to do what young men in war must do. You must only have yourself to worry about’ he said.”

  “He’ll always be good to you because you saved his life.”

  “And I mean to repay him for his kindness to me.”

  “Johannes will want money. He will want it to be made worth his while.”

  “I will send money.”

  “You will bring money. With a baby to look after I won’t be able to visit the city for a while.”

  “I’ll visit you, I promise. And I will bring your husband money.”

  “It is agreed then. I will take your daughter back with me.

  Ingrid broke the silence that descended between them as they both contemplated something of the future the little girl would have. “What did he mean? About war?”

  “He is convinced there’ll be a war. Maybe not next year, maybe not for a few years but before too long. You must be prepared to leave the farm at short notice. But there will be a time. I’ll get word to you when you have to leave.”

  “You think it will come to that. Leaving the country? Running away?”

  “Of course it will.”

  Ingrid looked at her brother uncomprehendingly.

  He answered her unspoken question in one word “Grandfather.”

  That was all he had to say to make her remember to be frightened and they were quiet again.

  This time it was Max’ turn to break the silence, changing the subject back to his daughter. “The child, I didn’t mean it to happen.”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “We enjoyed each other’s company. We talked about everything, you know, about religion and history, art and music and books. We talked a lot about books.”

  “Obviously you didn’t just talk.”

  “We loved each other.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “Mr Münz has told me never to see her again. I have no more chances. I won’t see her I’ll always love her and I will never forget her.”

  “What is her name? You’ve never told me.”

  “Monika. Her name is Monika.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Max poured us another drink from the beautiful decanter.

  “You know more about me than anyone alive Susannah, does everything you have learned make you like me more or less?”

  It was an odd question.

  “It’s not a question of ‘like’. I want to ‘understand’. You have had such an interesting life it would be a shame if the story wasn’t told.” Perhaps he had told me his story to deflect me from asking about David. I was not going to let him.

  “You talk of the time before the war, before you met David and before you became one of his Fishermen.”

  “You have been doing your homework.”

  “David told me quite a lot before he died, I have been learning more since.”

  “Come back tomorrow. I’m tired now”

  “I wanted to ask you about Vijay Thakersey?” I pressed him but Max appeared undisturbed at hearing the name. “You know he was behind your burglary don’t you?”

  “Vijay was behind a lot of things. I am tired. Come back tomorrow.” I was dismissed.

  Monika was waiting for us in the sitting room. She stood up as if impatient to see me gone.

  I aimed an air kiss on either side of Monika’s face, making sure no contact was made, and we said goodbye.

  She could not know she was Max’s daughter.

  Walking back up the long straight road towards my hotel I looked across at the lights of the houses on the other side of the golf course. I picked out Millcourt, my home when I was a child a
nd which had been since divided into flats. Ted had lived there for many years. But he had now left it too and I didn’t know where he was. I wondered if the new occupant would have an address, perhaps he would give it to me if I asked him in person.

  Standing at the door of Millcourt I looked at the array of bells. There was a new name on the label to Ted’s old flat but I couldn’t read the name on the sodden piece of card. I rang the bell anyway.

  I could hardly hear the man’s voice which crackled through the door phone so I briefly explained that I used to live in his flat and that I had first lived there when it had been an undivided house. The voice changed, he sounded young and enthusiastic. “Oh I’d love to hear about it then, come on up.”

  The buzzer went and the door clicked open.

  As I was ushered into the living room I remembered my mother, another ghost, sitting in the window seat. I hadn’t realised how much it would affect me to see this room again, it had barely changed. In that window seat I had sat listening hour after hour as she had recorded and re-recorded a song and a poem that were played at her funeral so soon afterwards. I could hear her voice I’ll see you again, whenever Spring breaks through again. She had been sitting in that window seat when I had read my step-mother’s death notice to her on the morning she died. Five years later I had been sitting there when Ted had told me so many things I had not known. ‘It took far too long,’ he once said, ‘I should have told you earlier. Truth can be painful and shocking, people run away from it but it catches up with them in the end.’ But he did tell me how my parents had lied to me to protect themselves. Perhaps he should have let that truth stay buried.

  The young man offered me a cup of tea “or perhaps a glass of wine? It must be very cold out there.”

  I accepted the wine and watched as he walked across the room. I was not too old to appreciate the looks and body of this young man in his dark blue jeans and grey wool polo-necked sweater.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, I couldn’t read it on the bell.”

  He didn’t answer immediately, instead establishing who I was. “You’re the lady who called for Ted Mottram, yesterday, on the phone? I recognise your voice.”